A Hot August Night in Tampa

Four players new to the game, Judge(Skyler) ,Tequila(James), Mad Dog(my son) and Sam Sei(me) rolled up to the warehouse. It was Thursday night; our usual time. Tequila killed the engine and we all went inside to split the loot.

I opened the bag and count it out; $55,000. A low whistle. Suddenly out come the guns. I'm pointing at Mad Dog and looking at three .45's pointed at me. I'm no wimp. I want my share. I'm not gonna back down.

Zombie Friday Night 7/30/2010

What a great weekend I just had!  Friday night, we had friends over.  We watched Shaun of the Dead and Army of Darkness while playing Zombie Dice , Battle Cards and Forbidden Island.  If that doesn't sound cool to you, then you aren't geek enough to hang with me  ; )

Baggywrinkle or What I did 7/11/2010

This is a picture looking up the mainmast of the United States Coast Guard Cutter Eagle taken from her temporary dock at Tampa while she is in town for the 2010 Parade of Sail .   I went with family and toured her today.  It was a hot and partly sunny wait in line at first, as they would only let about 40 tourists on board at a time.  People of all ages lined the dockside and that line stretched into the parking area beside the dock; I was honestly surprised by the number of people that turned out to see the anachronism of a sailing ship in this modern era.  After about an hour and a half of patient (and not so patient on the part of my 8 year old son) waiting, we were finally able to board the ship.

The Origin of Cannibals

I'm sure that you know what a cannibal is, but where did the word come from?  Do you know?  I will give you a hint, the fellow that gave us cannibals is celebrated with his own holiday every October.

Great Pirates Were Amateurs Once, Too.

In my last entry, I mentioned Captain Edward Lowe.  Ned Low, as he is sometimes referred to, was one of the most bloodthirsty pirates in history.  His cruelty was written about by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and even in the New York Times.  However, just because someone can bully and frighten others, it does not make them an experienced pirate.

Pink

I bet most of you 'lubbers are thinking by the title of this entry that it has nothing to do with pirates, etc, but you would be wrong.  A Pink is a ship with a very narrow stern.  It comes from the Dutch fishing boat or pincke and in the 17th and 18th centuries, pinks were often used as cargo ships to run between islands and thus were the targets of pirates.

Captain Edward Low, a notoriously cruel pirate of the 18th century, took a French pink as a prize once and made it his ship.  He renamed her Rose Pink.

Another meaning of pink, according to Webster's College Dictionary, is to pierce with a rapier or the like; to stab.  So that also is a piratical (or swashbuckling anyway) meaning to the word.

Isn't it amazing that pink and pirates are related?

Louis XIV's Magnificent Machine at Marley

Louis the XIV, the self-proclaimed "Sun King", had a passion for art and architecture.  While he was building up the fantastic palace at Versailles, he became keenly aware that there was not enough available water for his fantastic vision.  In fact, the Sun King needed almost as much water for his pools and fountains every day as all of the people of Paris needed to drink to live.  He challenged his architects and engineers to bring water from the Seine, which flowed some 3 miles north and almost 500 feet below the level of the Palace.

The Styles of Swordplay

During the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe, several different styles of sword fighting existed. The times and customs made the sword and swordplay almost common place. Schools and fraternities dedicated to the study of fencing sprang up all over Europe. Vast distances, both physical and political, made the spread of knowledge slow throughout the whole of Europe and so different styles of fighting developed in each country. Knowledge slowly spread and by the middle of the seventeenth century there were basically five styles of fencing. They are: the Old style, the Spanish style, the Italian style, the German style, and the French style. We will briefly examine each of them in turn.

The Navigational Cross-Staff

For over 20 years I have been heavy into historical re-creation and research. The following piece details the construction and testing of a navigational cross-staff that I entered into an SCA Arts and Sciences competition years ago.
Period/Culture: The navigational cross-staff, sometimes called the forestaff, was first developed in the fifteenth century. The cross-staff was initially used by astronomers as early as the ancient Greeks to measure the angles between celestial bodies. A German mathematician named Martin Behaim is credited with first using this instrument as a navigational tool while sailing with the Portuguese explorer Diogo Cao on his voyages down the coast of Africa in 1485. The cross-staff was used by every seafaring culture in western Europe. It did not fall completely out of use as a navigator's tool until the late eighteenth century.

. . .And a Bottle Full for the Chantyman

Welcome back my mates. In this issue of the Pirates Primer we will be discussing sea chanties. A chanty (or chantey or shanty) is a song sung by sailors in rhythm with their work. A chantyman is the person who leads the singing of chanties and adds or improvises verses as necessary. Chanties provide two large benefits. First, they unify the crew in its work and thus make that work more efficient. Second, they allow the crew some entertainment and relief from the long hours of repetitive work that is sailing. It is my belief that chanties are as old as ocean-going ships, but I cannot prove this through my research to date. Chanties can be dated much earlier than most people believe, however.

Hang the Musikers, Too

Hail Mates! Simon has returned from the war. I yet live, but it took me a while to recover. Perhaps sometime when we're not busy with learning about Pirates, I'll tell you about it over a cup or two of grog. For now though, I must apologize. I am sorry to have gotten behind on my column and I hope I still have an audience. This time we will be talking about another important part of some crews, but not all, the musicians.

It is difficult to prove that musicians were a part of every pirate crew, but there are two excellent examples from the pirate period that they may have been a common part of most ships of war, pirate and privateer ships included. The first example is from the early Seventeenth century. In Captain John Smith's advice concerning how to conduct a one on one naval engagement he remarks when preparing to board one should, ". . . sound Drums and Trumpets, and Saint George for England." The second example comes from the early Eighteenth century. In the articles of Captain Bartholomew Roberts it is stated: "The Musicians to have Rest on the Sabbath Day, but the other six Days and Nights, none without special Favour." When thinking about the musicians on board a ship in the 16th to 18th centuries, one must not think of a band. That would be far too organized a concept.

The Next in Line to Hang

In this second part of a three part lesson dealing with the crew positions aboard a pirate vessel, we are going to look at the responsibilities of the Sailmaster, the Carpenter, the Cook, the Surgeon, and the Master at Arms. These were all lower officer positions and were either voted upon or assigned by the captain as discussed in the first part of this lesson. The sailors who served in these positions were skilled laborers and, as such, their skills were always very much in demand. These were definitely crew members that a pirate ship could not function without.

Five for the Gallows Pole

If you are still interested in being a pirate, then you should know what the job entails. It's not all boarding ships, counting booty, and drinking rum like you might think. A great deal of hard work is required to run any sailing ship, let alone one populated by pirates. In this lesson of the primer we are going to examine the five principle officers on board a pirate ship, their duties, and their responsibilities. This is part one of a three part lesson. In the next lesson we will examine the duties and responsibilities of other officers and crew members with special duties. In the final lesson, we will look at one very special group of crew members that are almost always overlooked. Read on to learn what your shipmates would expect of their primary officers.

You Want Me to Sign Your What?

Well mates, as promised, it is time to discuss ship's articles. Before you can join a pirate crew, you'll have to sign their articles. It doesn't really matter if you can't read them or even if you can't write your name. Pirates are very forgiving about a lack of formal education. You can just make your mark and become part of the crew. Now Simon knows that is never going to go over with you. You're smart and you'll want to know what you're signing. So, in this lesson we are going to learn what the articles were, why they were needed, and how they were decided upon. As an additional aid to really understanding what the articles were like, we will analyze the articles of Captain John Phillips and his crew (c. 1720) point by point to determine what kind of items appeared in ship's articles.

4 Kinds of Caribbean Cutthroats

Welcome back mates. In this lesson we are going to explore the differences between four types of seafaring scoundrels. They are pirates, privateers, buccaneers, and marooners. When we are done, you'll know what each of these names mean, you'll understand why the old adage 'once a thief, always a thief' also applies to pirates, and you'll also learn what pirates called themselves. So freshen your drinks, pull up your chairs, and let's begin.

A pirate is a person who practices piracy. Piracy is any robbery or other violent crime, for private ends and without authorization by any country, committed on the seas. Basically, pirates attacked any vessel they chose without regard to nationality in order to make a profit. Typically pirates would attack a ship to force it to stop, then board that ship. After taking the ship, or securing the surrender of the crew, pirates would plunder the ship of its valuables and take any prisoners worth a ransom. After that, the pirates might try to recruit crew members from the plundered vessel to replace their losses or fill out their own crew. Finally, the pirates would return to their own ship and sail away. Contrary to popular belief, pirates were not always bloodthirsty killers. Many pirates considered piracy their occupation. These men simply wanted to do their job and get away with their plunder as quickly and easily as possible. If the captain and crew of the captured ship were not a hindrance, then they could often escape brutalization altogether. Some pirates, however, were in the business of torturing and killing. These pirates left a trail of plundered ships and murdered men where ever they went. It is this second sort of pirate that has colored the meaning of the word. There were pirates of every nationality and a few ships were even mixed in nationality, but that was rare. Typically ship's crews were of the same nationality and not diverse. Pirates and privateers were very much alike and sometimes the same.

Am I a Pirate or a Privateer?

A privateer was differentiated from a pirate by only one thing: a letter of marque. A letter of marque, which is sometimes called a letter of reprisal, was an official government sanction to harass enemy shipping granted most often during times of war. Sometimes these letters came directly from a king, but royal governors in the Caribbean could write them as well. A ship that carried a letter of marque was recognized as unofficial part of their country's navy. They were given the permission to attack ships of the nations defined in their letter without sanction from their own navy, provided that they gave the crown its share (usually 20%) in the spoils. In most things, however, pirates and privateers were exactly the same. It was not uncommon for privateers to attack vessels of countries not defined in their letter of marque and thus become pirates hiding behind a letter of marque. Another common practice was for privateers to continue their business after the letter of marque had been revoked because the war had ended. Thus, the distinction between privateer and pirate was always a very fine one. There is another factor to consider in this. Governments attempted to keep themselves informed of the actions of their privateers by means of the prize court.

80% is a good deal, right?

Privateers had to register their plunder with the prize court when they returned to port. The prize court inventoried the spoils of war taken by all privateers, deducted the kings share, and heard claims to the spoils by outside sources. For example, an English privateer engages a French privateer and wins the day. The English privateer captain decides to take the entire French vessel and their cargo as a prize. He selects a prize crew from his own crew to help man the French ship and keep its crew in line. Both ships sail back to the home port of the English privateer and the English captain turns the French ship and its cargo over to the prize court. The prize court, which was usually run by the royal governor, decides that the King will take the French ship as His share and publicly posts an inventory of the rest of the spoils for people to make claim against. Representatives of two English merchant companies look over the inventory and make claims against some of the French ship's cargo. The prize court hears their claims and decides that the first has no true claim to the goods as they can produce no proof that the goods are theirs. The second company presents a better case. They demonstrate that a little over half of the cargo of the French ship carries their company symbol. Furthermore, they present the cargo manifest of one of their missing merchant ships that is presumed lost. The cargo manifest seems to match the same cargo bearing their logo from the inventory of the French prize ship, so the court awards that cargo to the merchant company. This procedure takes a little over a month. When the English privateer returns to port, the captain finds that what he thought would be a great fortune for he and his crew is now just some petty trade goods that a representative from the first merchant company is willing to purchase from him at one quarter of its value. This is the life of a legitimate privateer. To duck the prize court or to hide spoils from it was an act of piracy.


There is another factor to consider concerning privateers. To illustrate it I will pirate a sentiment that was expressed by Benjamin Franklin when he was asked about the legality of the American revolution. (Understand that Simon doesn't often pirate the words of others, but Ben's phrasing is exceptional.) Privateers are completely legal in the first person, such as our privateers, it is only in the third person, their privateers, that they become illegal. When you are the victim of a privateer, they are a pirate and nothing more. Spain never recognized or sanctioned privateering as legitimate. All privateers were pirates in the eyes of the Spanish. Spanish dominance and cruelty in the Caribbean is legendary. The buccaneers were a creation of that cruelty.


From 1492, when Columbus claimed the new world for Spain, until 1588, when Admiral Lord Howard defeated the Spanish Armada, Spain completely dominated the Caribbean. Shortly after the defeat of her armada, Spain began to lose her colonies in the Caribbean to other countries. For the most part, the Spanish did not fight hard to keep these island colonies because they were busy plundering the natives of Mexico and South America of their riches. One of the colonies that was often contested was the French colony of Haiti on island of Hispanola. When the French settlers arrived they found wild oxen and pigs roaming the land. These animals came from the original Spanish settlers who had long ago moved further west. The early French settlers made a trade out of hunting these animals, cooking their meat in long strips, and selling the meat to passing Spanish ships. The rack that these meat sellers used to cook the long strips of meat were called "boucans", thus the Spanish sailors named these merchants "boucaniers". The Spanish government quickly decided that these "boucaniers" posed a threat to the security of their colony of Santo Domingo on Hispanola and began to move against them.

The buccaneers proved impossible for the Spanish to drive off. They began to retaliate against their Spanish oppressors using the tools at their disposal. Remember last week when I told you that it was hard to be a pirate without a ship. The buccaneers are why I did not say that it was impossible. The earliest buccaneer raids were conducted by canoes against Spanish ships moored off the shore of Haiti. The buccaneers, who prided themselves on their ability to hunt the wild pigs of Haiti with nothing but two long daggers, poured over the sides of the Spanish ships in the dark of night and silently killed all aboard. These tactics provided them with ships and from that point they differed only from Pirates in that their targets were almost exclusively Spanish. The marooners had a similar development.


The word marooner comes from the Spanish word, "cimarron", meaning wild or untamed. Cimarron was the name applied by the Spanish to runaway slaves, as well as Spanish deserters, in the Caribbean. It basically came to mean anyone of Spanish origin who lived in the wild away from Spanish civilization. The Spanish government made halfhearted attempts to destroy cimarron settlements, but the cimarron fought back using much the same tactics as the buccaneers. Just as the buccaneers, the cimarron, or marooners as they came to be called, targeted Spanish shipping and towns for their raids. A marooner came to be the name given to any pirate of African heritage. Maroon, the word for the act of leaving someone in a wild and untamed place has the same root, but does not otherwise relate to a marooner. We will discuss the punishment of marooning in a future lesson.

Boarding from a Small Boat

What did pirates call themselves? Well that depended upon their education and status when they went to sea. Pirates often called themselves pirates among themselves and merchant crewmen when among those who might take offense to their occupation. Privateers usually prided themselves upon the fact that they were privateers. Privateers took to using the term "Gentleman of Fortune" to describe themselves. This term was quickly picked up by the pirates. This became the general term that polite society used to favorably describe pirates, as well as the term that many pirates adopted to describe themselves.

A Gentleman of Fortune

Well mates, that's it for this week. Next week we'll discuss pirate articles and see why the Caribbean pirates were among the first corporations in the western hemisphere. Until then, may all be well with you.

---

Copyright 2001, Mark S. Cookman

The Pirate's Primer

So You Want to be a Pirate?

Look at yourself, ya scurvy dog. You think you want to be a pirate? You? . . .Ha! You're a landlubber, matey. I'll bet ya don't know your articles from your yard arm. Pirates are rough bunch of people and if you want to join 'em then you better learn up on 'em. Otherwise, you'll be kissing the gunner's daughter long before the dog watch. Lucky for you that I happen to run in that circle. I'll help ya out with The Pirate's Primer. Pay attention and you'll be kicking the powder monkey and climbing the ratlines in no time. Me? Oh, you can call me Simple Simon. I'm the cook, and sometimes the gunner's mate, aboard the privateer Sabine.

Let's start with some basics. First I'll explain everything I just said to you. And I'll use wee little words that a child could understand as I can see you're a bit confused. Then we'll talk about some of the future topics that you can expect to see in the Pirates Primer.


Scurvy is a disease caused by a lack of fresh vegetable food, but a scurvy dog is a low, base, mean or rotten person. I'm sure ya know what a landlubber is, anyone who is not a sailor. A ship's articles are the contract that everyone on board ship signs agreeing to abide by the rules of the ship. That may not sound very piratical to you, but it is through and through. A yard arm is either half of a long slender horizontal pole affixed at a right angle to the to a mast that is used to support a square sail. Kissing the gunner's daughter refers to a shipboard punishment involving being tied over a cannon to stretch your back out real well for a flogging. The dog watches are a pair of short half shift watches occurring roughly from 4-6 and 6-8 pm. Kicking the powder monkey refers to harassing one of the young lads who serve aboard ship to quickly run the bags of gunpowder from the magazine, where it is kept safe and dry, to the cannons. The rat lines are the cargo netting-like ladders that run up the sides of the masts. Now maybe you know a little more than you did before and that is the goal here.


As the weeks go by we will look at the different types of ships seen in the age of piracy. We will discuss the parts of a sailing ship and her rigging. We will talk about the various crew positions on board ship. We will examine the ship's articles and discuss why they made the rules they did. We will talk about naval warfare during the period as well as some of the famous figures of the time both pirates and pirate hunters. Finally, since we're not at sea, this won't be one man rules all so I welcome any comments, questions, or suggestions that you might have. Don't worry matey. Just stick with Simple Simon. I'll not be tellin' anyone how green ye are now and soon enough you'll know more about being a sea dog than ye ever dreamed.

---

Copyright 2001, Mark S. Cookman

Old News -- Sad

It's been nearly a year since I wrote this on another blog, but I just wanted to save it. Sheril is now in remission and doing very well. This entry was originally entitled:

But Why a Spoon, Cousin?

"Because it would hurt more, you idiot." -- Sheriff of Nottingham to his cousin Guy of Gisbourne in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves

For anyone who does not know the reference here, just prior to this the sheriff says that when he catches Robin Hood he will carve his heart out with a spoon. I know what that feels like now. On August 17th at 11:11 AM, my wife of 11 years, my best friend, my confidant and lover was diagnosed with stage IV Lymphoma.

Words cannot convey the pain. Sheril has been in the hospital for 3 days now and I am SO lonely and heartsick when I am not near her that it is pathetic. Everything else pales by comparision. I do all of the motions of my life, but it all seems so empty.

I try to be brave for our son (He is seven and about to start 2nd grade.), but I don't think I have the strength to keep it up. He lost his Grandpa on his 6th birthday and so is no stranger to loss. He asked me last night if his Mama was going to die. I had to look him in the face and say, "I don't know, Johnathan. She is very sick, but I don't know if she will die."

I'm kicking butt on the wii 30 day challenge because I just throw myself so hard into the exercises that I lose myself. The sweat and hard work gives me a brief respite from the pain. It's kinda funny. I would have expected that I would fall back to comfort foods to get me through this, but instead I find that I have no appetite at all. I eat the meals I have prepared in advance, but there is no joy in eating.

Right now there is no joy -period-

My apologies to all who have read this. I didn't want to bring anyone else down, but I had to let some of this pain out of myself. May you, gentle reader, have a blessed day. I thank you for your time.

What in the Woold

Woolding is the act of wrapping a thin, flexible piece of wood around someone's head to make a loop and then slipping another piece of wood inside that loop and twisting until that someone's eyes pop out of their head.

It was a method of torture used by pirates in the late 17th and early 18th century. To be fair, they learned the technique from Spanish inquisitors working for the Catholic church.

Why would I name my blog such a thing?

We are, for the most part, completely spoiled by modern society. When twitter goes down, it is a major catastrophe for some. When we cannot connect to the internet, it is problem that must be resolved. If we do not have cell phone reception, it is just torture.

There are far worse things than our minor troubles.

Are you, or anyone you know, likely to get woolded any time soon? I didn't think so. ; )